The Speakers

Dr. Chiara Burlina is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova (Italy). She has worked as a research fellow in Regional Science at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (Italy) and as a postdoc at the Catholic University of Milan (Italy), after completing the PhD in Economics and Management from the University of Padova (Italy). His research interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, Regional Economics, Economic Geography, and Institutions. Her research specifically explores how different economic factors impact the development of regions, based on a quantitative approach. She has collaborated actively with researchers in other disciplines, like creative and cultural economics, innovation, and finance. She has published on international peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Regional Science, Regional Studies, European Urban and Regional Science, Environment and Planning A, Applied Economics. She has also participated in several research projects as research officer, including HORIZON 2020 on socioeconomic and cultural transformations in the context of the fourth industrial revolution.

Bernardo Caldarola is an applied economist, working as researcher at the United Nations University - UNU MERIT in Maastricht. Previously, he worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Enrico Fermi Research Center in Rome. He received a PhD in Science and Technology Policy from the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex (Brighton, UK). His research examines transformation of economic structures, aiming to understand the impact of technology on the process of structural change with a particular interest in its inclusiveness and sustainability. His research bridges several academic fields, such as development economics, economic geography and economic complexity. He has also collaborated with several international organizations and research centres, including the former UK Department for International Development, the Institute of Development Studies and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Prof. Carolina Castaldi holds the Chair in Geography of Innovation at Utrecht University. Her research deals with processes of innovation and how they unfold over time and over space. Her goal is to develop a broad account of innovation, as including both technological and non-technological forms. As such, she has investigated extensively how innovation emerges in service and creative sectors and the changing business models through which companies operate in local and global markets. She is using theories and concepts from evolutionary economics, in combination with insights from other disciplines. Her most recent research aims at understanding how firm-level innovation drives regional development and the resilience of places. Her original contribution to research on geography of innovation also includes the development of novel indicators of innovation, exploiting patent and trademark data.

Dario Diodato is an economist for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Between 2017 and 2019, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University’s Growth Lab and – before a PhD in Economic Geography at Utrecht University (2013-2017) – he worked as a researcher in urban and regional economics at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (The Hague, 2009-2012). Diodato’s research interests include technological change,  structural transformation, migration and technology diffusion, cities and regions, human capital and skills, economic complexity, and economic resilience.

François is Deputy Director of the Complexity Economics group, Lead Researcher at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, an Oxford Martin fellow, an Associate member of Nuffield college, and an External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna.

François’s main areas of research are in the economics of innovation and productivity, environmental economics, complex systems, and forecasting. Currently, his research interests lie in the macroeconomics of the net zero transition, the structure and evolution of production networks, and the future of technology.

His research has appeared in economics and interdisciplinary journals, and has been featured in books, news articles, and public sector reports. See https://francoislafond.info for updated information, including working papers.

Robert Marschinski leads a team of researchers on ‘Applied Environmental Economics’ at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. His recent research addresses environmental policy and its impacts on the global competitiveness of EU industries and the EU Single Market. In his work he also employs tools from Economic Complexity to assess EU capabilities in green and critical technologies. Before obtaining his PhD in climate economics and policy from University TU Berlin, he completed a degree in physics at the University of Bologna

Luciano Pietronero is the President of the Enrico Fermi Research Center, formerly Full Professor at the Physics Department of La Sapienza University of Rome and at the University of Groningen. Professor Pietronero has a broad international experience in academic and industrial institutions. Author of more than 400 scientific papers, he was the coordinator of a national PNR project “Crisis Lab” funded by the Italian Government and of several international research projects. Chairman of the international conference on Statistical Physics STATPHYS 23 held in 2007 in Genoa (Italy). Expert of statistical physics, many body theories, and one of the world's leading expert of complex systems and economic complexity. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Enrico Fermi Prize, the highest award of the Italian Physical Society. He  founded and directed (2010-2016) the CNR Institute of Complex Systems (ISC). From 2016, he is Senior Advisor for the World Bank Group. 

Andrea Tacchella is Senior Reseacher at CREF, where he works at the intersection of Economic Complexity, machine learning and innovation studies. Previously he was post-doc researcher at the Institute of Complex Systems at CNR, where he contributed to the birth and development of the Economic Complexity framework, laying out its empirical and theorethical foundations. In the same years he has been a consultant for numeorus firms and international organizations (Azimut Capital Management, Royal Dutch Shell, Lastminute.com), and he has collaborated with the World Bank in the implementation of the EFC framework for policy. Between 2019 and 2022, Andrea has worked at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Seville, to promote the use of EFC methods among the economic analysis tools of the Commission. 

Fabiana Visentin is Assistant Professor at UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University, and her research interests focus on the microeconomics of innovation and the economics of science area. In these topics, her contributions have appeared in the American Sociological Review, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Research Policy, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Science and Public Policy, and PlosOne. Before moving to the Netherlands, Fabiana worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Chair of Economics and Management of Innovation at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland, and at the Goizueta Business School, Atlanta, USA.

Andrea Zaccaria is a researcher at the Institute for Complex Systems-CNR in Rome. He received his Ph.D. in Physics at the "Sapienza" University of Rome, where he applied concepts and methods borrowed from statistical physics and the physics of complex systems to the study of financial markets. As a member of the research and development group of SoSE Spa, one of the main Italian fiscal agencies, he developed a machine learning algorithm to classify taxpayers and detect tax evasion. In his current role with ISC, Andrea is exploring the use of complex networks methodologies, algorithmic tools, and machine learning in the field of economics. This activity led Andrea to the appointment as a consultant at public and private organizations, including the International Finance Corporation-World Bank Group.